I'm sure others on the AMMRL Steering Committee have better memories, but
here's my version. I'll bet Vera's even got this history documented
somewhere (being the amazing historian that she has demonstrated herself to
be over the years 8-).
Various facility managers had discussed having some kind of "meeting of the
minds" (so to speak) of our kind, during ENC, for some time before AMMRL
started. Many of us realized that we represented (and continue to
represent) a large fraction of ENC attendees; however, much of the program
content (while interesting and important) didn't really relate to our
everyday interests and problem.
Finally, at Asilomar in 1992 (I believe) some of us (hmmm, Jane Strouse,
Very Mainz, Rudi Nunlist, Karen Ann Smith, Shaw Huang, Bill Stevens, ...I'm
sure I'm leaving people out...I apologize) took action, and posted an
announcement on the overhead at the end of a session: "NMR Facility Managers
interested in forming an informal group...(whatever)...please meet at the
Gazebo behind the Chapel (what's it called...Sanderling?) at 7:00...or
whenever" .Vera probably still has the transparency <grin>...sorry Vera 8-).
I obviously paraphrased from 8-year-old, stale RAM (in my head), but about
_45_ of our kind (facility managers/directors from academia and industry)
showed up to discuss what we could do. There were LOTS of ideas, and
AMAZING camaraderie (IMHO). I can still feel the enthusiasm from that group
on that day...I think it really, genuinely affected me.
At the first meeting Rudi piped-up and said something like, "we could setup
a listserver". Many mumbled...."what's a listserver". Answer: well, it's
a server that accepts E-Mail, and automatically forwards it to a list of
recipients. _mumble, mumble_...what's E-Mail? 8-). At that time, most of
us at larger, academic institutions had been using E-Mail for some time, but
much of industry and many smaller schools weren't wired at all
yet....sheesh, it seems so strange now!
A core group collected the ideas, and chewed on what to do...that core group
became most of what we now call the "Steering Committee"
(
http://www.chem.yale.edu/~bangertr/ammrl/steer.html ). I must confess that
I did very little to help (other than talk a lot..I'm certainly good at
that); however, I've been trying to make up for lost time since 8-). Vera
and Rudi did so much...can't even begin to delineate it all. Vera was (and
still is, I believe) the acting "secretary", and forwarded hardcopies of our
E-discussions to offline members using snail-mail for quite awhile. That
was an expense, and I'm not even clear about the various, creative ways Vera
managed to cover those costs. Rudi, true to his word, got the list up and
running and he did a wonderful job running it until I took the thing off his
hands a few years ago. It took some time before our numbers (on the list)
grew into triple digits. I think we were at about 140-150 members when I
took-over maintenance of the list. We are now hovering at around 600, and
the membership is worldwide!
We've had an annual, ENC meeting every year since, and our E-Mail has
evolved to be our primary (for the most-part) only day to day function. I
think it has evolved into what we all dreamed of back in 1992...a conduit,
through which we can share ideas, ask for help, and help each other out. In
my opinion, this is the most positive, helpful group of people one could
find, and that is what makes AMMRL work so well.
As I said, these are must my remembrances, right or wrong, of how we started
out. I wouldn't be surprised if others pipe-in with additions or
corrections.
Cheers,
Rich Shoemaker
----
Richard Shoemaker, Ph.D. Phone--(402) 472-6255
Instrumentation Director, Chemistry FAX---- -6964
Research Associate Professor, Chemistry
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
URL: http://www.chem.unl.edu/nmrlab.html
Received on Thu Feb 17 2000 - 14:12:21 MST